Seven Breaching Habits of Highly Effective Units

Mobility is Job No.1. Without it our forces will go nowhere. However, enemy forces throughout history have found numerous methods of blocking roads, creating barriers, and limiting the movement of advancing forces. In turn, great armies have conducted combined arms breaching operations to overcome these obstacles to press the fight and destroy the enemy. The orchestration and execution of this task may be the toughest job a maneuver commander will ever face. The purpose of this article is to assess breaching operations based on lessons learned at the National Training Center NTC, Fort Irwin, California, while also revealing the Seven Breaching Habits of Highly Effective Units. In 1999, the Training and Doctrine Command TRADOC developed a trends-reversal program to review unit execution of numerous mission-essential tasks. One task, combined arms breaching, was high on the list for review and assessment. TRADOC designated NTC Rotation 00-10 as a combined arms breach-focused rotation and coordinated with the U.S. Army Engineer School to assess negative trends in breaching operations. This onerous task, executed by some tremendous maneuver and engineer leaders, validated one thing the trend has not been reversed. Combined arms breaching operations are difficult and remain a negative trend. This is no surprise to warfighters anywhere and is echoed by the Sidewinder Combat Engineer Observer-Controller Team at NTC. Opposed combined arms breaching, under fire, against a capable opponent like the NTC Opposing Force OPFOR, is tough but not impossible. Field Manual FM 3-34.2, Combined Arms Breaching Operations formerly FM 90-13-1, says that breaching is perhaps the single most difficult combat task a force can encounter. The May 2001 issue of Engineer indicates that it took the U.S. Marines 2.5 to 9.5 hours to clear two lanes through an Iraqi obstacle belt during Operation Desert Storm.